Vandal cuts down 30 cherry blossom trees in Chiba

Police in Chiba said Friday they are looking for the person or persons responsible for cutting down 30 cherry blossom trees in the city’s Chuo Ward.

The vandalism was reported by an NPO which said that sometime last week, the trees were cut down by a saw. TV Asahi reported that the majority of the trees had been planted by children along the path of a river seven years ago.

Police said that young Yoshino cherry trees, which had grown to have trunks of around 10 cm in diameter, were among those vandalized.

Poor kids! I hope the kids, their families etc..REPLANT these beautiful trees right away! Who ever was responsible for cutting down the cherry tries must be crazy or have some nutter mixed grudge against cherry trees?? We all know George Washington and his famous line, "Daddy, I can not tell a lie, I cut down the cherry tree." Do hope this phrase is taught to our Japanese students and friends. By the way, no CC cameras to video tape this part of Chiba?? How in the heck can you cut down so many trees and NO BODY SEES THIS JERK or JERKS cutting the trees down??

Anybody wanna speculate about a motive? Teenagers just being vandals or some old person with a grudge against cheery blossom trees?

Disillusioned, In this country, I rarely see or hear of teenagers being vandalizing little thugs. Of course they do exist (my hubby was quite the little hell raiser) but they seem to prefer other kinds of entertainment.

On the contrary, its usually some local grumpy oyaji doing vandalism, (and other random crimes, like poisoning animals in the local park... )

I predict a grumpy old man who lives alone, and the excuse will come out like "I live nearby and all the hanami parties and general happiness which stemmed from them were noisy and disrupted my 8 o clock bedtime. Once a party even accidentally left a potato chip and a cigarette butt in the area after the party. I wanted to make them stop."

kimuzukashii: "Disillusioned, In this country, I rarely see or hear of teenagers being vandalizing little thugs."

You must be wearing blinders, because you can read about little thugs beating up homeless or vandalizing things daily. But I DO think this was the act of some crazed older person, and not a teen. Don't ask me why, but that's my feeling.

In any case, it's a shame. The biggest shame being they were trees planted by kids. I don't see what this solves.

When they catch him, they should tie him to a still-standing tree with yellow ribbons and make him watch while drunken revelers sing and carouse. "Make the punishment fit the crime" as they sang in The Mikado.

What a shame, especially for those children who planted them 7 years ago, watched them grow and for whom they doubtless carried tremendous sentimental value.

Its hard to know how to redress this incident. On one hand they are just a bunch of trees, and so simple replacement with similarly aged trees should be sufficient, however on the other hand they had sentimental value and their importance as cultural symbols in Japan elevates their value above simple replacement.

I'd say that a reasonable compromise might be to capture the offender and sentence them to purchasing, planting and caring for 210 cherry blossom saplings for a period of 7 years. Why 210? Because those 30 cherry blossom trees were 7 years old. Thus their value is 7 times more than a sapling, plus making him responsible for their wellbeing for 7 years may give the individual some perspective on the devotion and care it took for others to raise those trees.

Naturally is a tree dies the offender's sentence is extended, they need to plant a new one and care for it until it is 7 years old. Thus lack of care and attention are self-correcting.

a chainsaw would make too much noise especially at night, handsaw while takes a lot of effort is quiet which is why he didnt get caught, im guessing there will be cherry blossom patrols in the coming months. LOL

Those kids probably worked so hard for those trees to grow. If I was one of those kids, I'd be ticked. All those kids wanted to do was share their love for their community and nature. Whoever did it is a straight out d!ck.

This doesnt smack of mindless vandalism to me - the effort involved is too high. A teenage vandal would have hacked down one or two and then got bored and moved on. This seems like someone with a grudge.

I live near a " danchi" where there were rows of cherry tress along the sidewalk but has been cut by order of the city's municipal...I couldn't understand why.
When I asked the reason, they said because of the insects ...????? What a pity it was to see it go, now you can see an old painted facade of the danchi and gone are the days where there were full blown huge trees of cherry.

Tree vandalizing is common in rural northern Europe, although usually within a few days of planting. It's a little sad to see this place adopting more and more of the plights of western countries.
I think you people are overestimating the impact this has on the children though, likely they didn't "work" very hard for the trees and it was just something they were told to do. I planted trees in kindergarten and I can't even remember where that was now.